Linda Kessler is an American photographer and painter. She is known for her contrasting work between gritty black & white documentary and street photographs, and gestural, layered color abstractions. She is currently based in New York and Greece.

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Early Life and Education

​Ms. Kessler became interested in both painting and photography as a young child growing up in a working-class urban Brooklyn environment and later on, the ocean community of the Rockaways in Queens.  One of her role models, early on, was her aunt, Ruth Vodicka, a New York sculptor, part of the Soho art community, known for her monumental welded figurative sculptures.  While primary school was an obstacle for Ms. Kessler, due to her being dyslexic, she found art became her refuge. At eleven years of age her aptitude was recognized and rewarded with her first exhibited painting as part of a group show, in the Lever House on Park Avenue, New York City.  At the same time she picked up her first camera, a Kodak Brownie, fascinated with this tool that could capture images, albeit her first image, of her family, had their heads cut off.  

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After completing her bachelor's degree in New York, she moved to Boston to further her education and interest in psychology and received a graduate degree from Northeastern University. After four years, however, she returned to New York so she could ultimately pursue her original passion and began a formal education at the renowned Art Students' League, and at the atelier of Bulgarian artist, Anton Russev.  Upon completion of her art she travelled to San Miguel de Allende, México for several months where she started to utilize the foundation of art with a direction toward abstraction.

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In her mid 30s she had an opportunity to live in Brazil for two years.  While Saō Paulo was her base she traveled extensively to the northeast of Brazil and the Amazon where she was captivated by the colors, music, dance, language, food and kindness of the country, especially while photographing the Saõ Paulo favela in its poverty.  During this time she met Magnum photographer, Eli Reed, who, upon seeing her work, encouraged her to continue. 

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While back in New York Ms. Kessler attended Pratt Institute and received a M.F.A. in painting. Her work began to depart from figurative brush painting to deconstructing and reconstructing the surface using unconventional materials, such as tar and marble dust.  Creating non-objective work forced her to reveal her subconscious with a physical disarmament.  Antoni Tàpies, Vasudeo S. Gaitonde, Joan Mitchell, and Wilhelm Reich informed her work.

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In 2000 she accepted a position teaching art and photography as an instructor to a small neighborhood public middle/high school in Brooklyn with a population of Carribean, Afro-American, Asian and immigrant students.  Teaching gave her the latitude to invent projects to address students experience, which were virtually non-existent. After fifteen years, Ms. Kessler retired and began to live for extended periods of time overseas. At that time she received a National Endowment for the Arts grant for her exhibition, "Subway Sleepers," at La Mama Gallery, in New York City.  In the late 2000s she lived in Paris for three months, traveling to Auschwitz, which left an indelible influence on her; and the following year for six months in Barcelona, exploring Spain, Portugal, Southern France and Morocco.  And, then she discovered Cuba, which she returned to yearly. Her love of traveling she says "is like a child seeing the circus for the first time, with its excitement and fascination."  "There is no education that compares with traveling."

 

She has exhibited widely and is a recipient of multiple awards and honors for her paintings and photographs. Ms. Kessler continues the work she began as a young child, painting and photographing, and traveling.  Her next photography project is to document the art of Flamenco in the south of Spain.